No Plan B: The Manafest Manifesto

In 1998, a young Canadian named Chris Greenwood was injured in a skateboarding accident, (it was the 90's, everyone was getting in skateboarding accidents)
and it was after this event that Chris began to listen to an inspiration inside him to focus on writing rap songs. He wrote what he knew; he wrote about his life, his experiences with God, relationships, and pain. And he had plenty of subject matter to draw from.
Fast-forward some 12 years and four full-length albums later, Chris is now known as the talented rap/rock artist dubbed "Manafest", and most beautifully, a believer in the saving grace of God. But life hasn't always been what Chris wanted it to be.

Chris experienced things that no young person should have to; for example,he personally discovered his own father's basement suicide, and his mother's grief that ensued.
He experimented with drugs and drinking, and in an interview said "But God kind of changed me in terms of that stuff. I stopped doing that. I found that it all didn’t really push me forward in excellence and skating. Skateboarding kind of kept me away from that.” (Thus the skateboarding accident.)
God was doing a work in Chris' life.
“I went to this camp for a month in Cobourg, and this guy was talking about God and stuff. He was asking us if we knew where we were going to go when we die and stuff. So that pulled me out, and I started thinking where I was going." Chris went on to say, in an interview with Curb_Sidemag,

“That’s when I found I could have a relationship with God, without those religious rules. I was never about the hymns, but I wanted to find out how God could change my life and other people’s lives."

And what about the name "Manafest"?
“It’s totally the same meaning. You know, when something’s made manifest, it’s exposed to the light. That’s the meaning of it.”

His current tour zig-zags across Canada,the U.S., and Japan (where his music BOMBED, by the way). Manafest gives Jesus the credit for his musical and personal success. His latest album, "The Chase", is a fine-tuned project incorporating rock, rap, guitar driven, and electronic elements. Lyrically, it's like colorful liquid graffiti, just pouring through your ears. As in all his music I've heard so far, the lyrics are life-relevant and worthy of listening to.

What I love about Chris and his music is his transparency, his "outness", his grateful approach to life (check out his song "Live On")and his comfort in simply being himself. He paints an honest portrait of himself in songs such as "Impossible" and "My Life". My personal new favorite, his new single "No Plan B", is a manafesto, if you will, about his determination.
-Bethany Pace